Mumbai: Godrej & Boyce, part of the diversified Godrej group, introduced its furniture brand Script on Monday, targeting young professionals in a premium market.
The company will open the first Script store in Bengaluru on 19 December and also sell its products online, Rajat Mathur, business head of Script told reporters. Godrej & Boyce is investing Rs150 crore in setting up the stores and Rs25-30 crore to market the brand.
The company is targeting sales of Rs320 crore for Script by 2020-21, when it expects to have 18 stores across Delhi, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chandigarh.
“Furniture has globally been a very fragmented market,” said Anil Mathur, chief operating officer of Godrej & Boyce. “We see people looking at furniture as an integrated part of your life.”
Script will feature “premium expressive” furniture which focuses on functional design including customizable cabinets and reading corners among others.
Godrej is positioning the brand in the mid-premium market worth that it estimates at nearly Rs10,000 crore, Rajat Mathur said. “There is a huge gap in what we like to call ‘attainable premium’. Most organized brands are clustered around the low and mid markets which are worth Rs17,000 crore and Rs29,000 crore respectively,” he said.
Godrej’s entry into branded furniture comes at a time when online furniture brands are setting up physical stores. While Pepperfry operates Studio Pepperfry in 11 cities, UrbanLadder has three stores. Meanwhile, Swedish major Ikea is working on two stores in India—in Hyderabad and Mumbai—and has acquired land for a third in Gurgaon. Ikea products are known for their affordability and innovative design.
“What Ikea is going to do in India is what everyone is asking,” Mathur said in the briefing. “But it is not a premium brand globally. In any country, Ikea does not have more than close to double-digit market share because the market is so fragmented,” he said. Godrej expects its furniture business to grow 18% year on year.